The Man From Earth

No special effects, no action, no sex and no violence. Just dialog, but the script is so good it is worth renting a copy of this really great sci-fi movie about a Cromagnon man who never died and who finally reveals himself to his friends:

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6 thoughts on “The Man From Earth”

This is quite a coincidence for you to post this item, at this time, let me tell you…

I hadn’t visited your blog in weeks (since my last post), buried in semester, but, just yesterday, I was finishing up my grading and getting ready to turn in final grades..and allowing myself some break time from grading..went to video.google.com and found some old star trek episode/s to watch..

Warning: don’t go to the wikipedia entry to The Man From Earth unless you are willing to know the plot in advance..but it got me curious..and when the wikipedia entry mentioned that for this 2007 movie that the producer “thanked users of BitTorrent who have distributed the movie without express permission..” I figured there was a good chance it’s online..sure enough it was..and I watched parts 3 through 6 (I skipped parts 1 and 2..yes..or at least part 1..) last night..just last night.

Then today with grades behind me, I surft over to beforewisdom.com and find (what at the time was) the 2nd from top entry and it’s about this movie..what are the odds? I watched the last three parts, 7, 8, and 9, earlier today..

I’m wondering how you found out about the movie, and when you found out about it..

Also the wikipedia entry in the last 9 words of the plot (for when/if people are ready to read it) is less ambiguous than the movie’s ending, but both are cool.

I mostly like the movie..he started the script back in the 1960s and dictated it to his son on his death bed in 1998 I think it was..the stuff about religion, Christinity in particular, it the kind of thing where comedy, or drama/fiction, lets you get away with saying or suggesting more than you could directly, as is all so frequently the case. Nothing too radically new, but a nice synthesis of points others have made and (while the acting was not that wonderful) the script, the lines, the way it was put together, I thought was pretty good, and yes a worthwhile movie to watch and think about.

Two peeves..one, it is a bit too convenient to act like the Old Testament is all 100% one way (punishing god etc etc) and the New Testament is all 100% the other way (love thy neighbor etc etc), has some grains of truths of course, but over simplified and too convenient for the mostly-Christian audience…

As a non-religious but spiritual person born in Judaism, I made the opposite point recently (in my mind, and soon, in my LJ) when a sex-positive writer’s short youtube video made it sound like Judaism is almost all sex-positive and made it sound as if Christianit leaders’ history is almost all of where sex-negative aspects of Christianity as we know it today come from. Again: has some grains of truth, but too simplistic and lets mainstream Judaism off the hook too easily, just as Man From Earth lets Christianity off too easily as all “love your neighbor” but makes up for it by NOT letting the BS that pretends to be Christianity off the hook, he lets ’em have it good, one calculated dialogue step at a time, good job 🙂

The other peeve is, the framework could have allowed for real multi-centurty perspective on other things, like the devastation of the environment (which is only very briefly touched upon) but you can only sqeeze so much into one movie, some future progressive radical scriptwriter can take it to that dimension some time in the future perhaps 🙂

Mind you Requiem for Methuselah isn’t anywhere near as deep or interesting. Portrays Kirk as more intereste in, or at least more focused on, “the girl” than his ship, makes him look like an ass in this way (remember, Shatner didn’t write the script, he was just following it!) and falling in love with a robot, and falling in love with anyone in just a short time, very silly. And the usual gender typical crap, sexism (or more accurately, accurate portrayal of late 60s sexist social roles) but less obvious, but also there, some feminism, in the form of “No! I chose! __I__ choose!” which would have been “too preachy” for audiences if the point was made about womens’ wanting ‘agency’ but slipped in under the radar in the present fom.

(What they do for the female robot of course they have done 101 times for male and female and neuter robots before, over and over again, in a zillion episodes, illogic or contradiction causing self destruction)

But, similarly, the episode about hippies and the one about city at the end of forever, each had both anti-(anti-war-movement) and anti-war elements mixed in, probably some battles in the back on the details of the script; I know that was the case for City on Edge of forever where the original script writer protested (he was strongly anti Vietman war) but even in the final form there was a mix of anti-war (“she was right. Peace WAS the answer. Just not now..”) etc.